Incompleteness Theorem
by Alixtii
Summary: Crazy!Fred visits Wolfram&Hart looking to balance an equation. Lilah, Fred, Mesektet. Set during the summer between Angel S2 and S3.


**Incompleteness Theorem**

Lilah looked over her desk at the thin brunette on the other side. Very thin. Lilah supposed the girl had been rather malnourished in whatever that hell dimension she had been in had been. (_Pylea_, Lilah saw as she flipped through the file on her desk.)

"Well, how can I help you, Fred?" Lilah asked, leaning forward. "It is okay if I call you Fred, isn't it?"

Fred pulled back, but Lilah supposed that was due more to her psychological traumas than anything personal against Lilah herself. According to Wolfram & Hart's best intelligence, she had developed an intense social anxiety, never leaving the Hyperion Hotel and, so far as they could tell (their eyes and ears only reached so far), hardly ever even leaving her own room.

Except of course, here she now stood, in Lilah's office in the Wolfram & Hart building. Alone.

"They know," Fred said, suddenly. "The wolf, ram, and hart. They know how the equation balances. I read the books, and I say the words, but it won't balance. I assign it a Gödel number and divide it by six and still it won't, won't compute. I ran it backwards—"

"Miss Burkle," Lilah interjected, gently but firmly, "I have no idea what you are talking about. If you want, I can hook you up with one of the boys in our R&D division, see if—"

But Fred was shaking her head vigorously. "Need to solve it in _n_-dimensional space," she said. "They can't do it. Can only think one way. A equals A. Nice, solid box. Aristotle's box, sitting in the corner invisible because we didn't realize we were in it. But wrong. Plato was wrong, too. They all were. They didn't understand. They didn't know."

"What is it they didn't know?" Lilah probed, trying to get some sense from the crazed girl. She wondered if the task were totally hopeless, are if there was an off chance she might get a comprehendible response.

"Numbers," Fred answered, as if it were obvious. "Two becomes three, and four stands alone. They're not stable, not firm; they slide into each other. That's what happened when I opened the book: I slid. Plato didn't know about the sliding. But he knew about the cave. Need to leave the cave to find the answer. I know about caves. I lived in a cave, in Aristotle's box, and I couldn't find the answer. But you know the way out of the cave."

The girl seemed convinced of her statement, but whatever it was supposed to represent Lilah had no idea. "I do?"

"The wolf, the ram, and the hart," Fred explained. "They don't live in the cave. They live in the forest."

Okay, now Fred had moved from the incomprehensible mathematics talk to just general insanity. Even Drusilla had been easier to understand than this. "You want me to take you to the Senior Partners?" Lilah hazarded.

Fred nodded. "Up a level. The system can't contain its own solution. It just loops back on itself, like a Moëbius band. But who watches the Watchers?"

Lilah considered. For all she knew, everything the girl had been spouting was nonsense. But Lilah doubted it. The girl was crazy, yes, suffering from severe anxiety and phobias. But she wasn't schizophrenic, the way Dru had been. She didn't hallucinate. Whatever it was Fred was talking about, it was something true, something real.

Something, perhaps, Wolfram & Hart would one day be able to use to its advantage. After all, according to the file, this girl had once been unusually gifted mathematically. And if Lilah could get Fred to trust her, could create an ally within Angel Investigations while Angel himself was off brooding over the death of his college-student girlfriend—well, that would be an invaluable asset.

"It can be done," Lilah said. "There's a place, called the White Room. It's . . . well, it's outside your cave, I guess. I don't know how to get there, though. There was this guy from accounting who went, and now. . . ." Now, he's insane. That shouldn't bother Fred, though, Lilah realizes. The girl's already crazy. It's for herself that Lilah has to fear. And the potential reward is worth the risk.

Or would be, if Lilah knew how to get there. "We'll have to talk to Linwood first." She rose, leading Fred to the elevator in the hall.

Before Lilah could push the number for Linwood's floor, though, Fred had pushed her out of the way and begun pushing buttons. "The Fibonacci sequence, inverted, over an infinite series of finite transformations," Fred muttered as she worked, as if the buttons she was pushing were in an order that was somehow nonrandom. The girl took a step back with a triumphant look on her face as a large button formed above the others where none had been before. Before Lilah could stop her, Fred had pushed the button, and Lilah found herself engulfed in a blinding white light.

* * *

"Would you like a cup of tea?"

Lilah blinked. She found herself in a totally white room, bare except for the small girl who stood in front of her. The young girl stood at a small pink table surrounded by a large number of small pink chairs. Three of the chairs were occupied: one by a stuffed rabbit, another by a porcelain doll, and the third by a novelty tortoise.

Lilah wasn't exactly sure how to react. She didn't know what she had expected the White Room to be like, but she could be sure that it wasn't this. Fred, on the other hand, seemed perfectly at home in the new surroundings, sitting on one of the too-small chairs and picking up an empty pink teacup, pantomiming taking a long sip. "This is very good tea."

"I'm glad you like it," the girl—could this really be Mesektet, conduit to the Senior Partners and member of the Ra-Tet?—said, picking up the pink teapot and pouring Fred some more imaginary tea. "Would you like a crumpet?"

Lilah watched, unbelieving, as Fred accepted the hunk of plastic and pretended to nibble at it. Lilah felt completely thrown for a loop, as if the normal rules the world ran by had suddenly been rescinded. Actually, that was exactly what had happened, she realized—here in the White Room everything was fluid, nothing more or less than a manifestation of will. Perhaps that was why Fred suddenly seemed so comfortable.

"Are you going to join us, Lilah?" Mesektet asked pointedly, and Lilah quickly sat down, trying to do her best to ignore how the ill-fitting plastic chair hurt her ass. Mesektet held the pink teapot over the small cup in front of Lilah, ostensibly filling it with the invisible tea. When Mesektet had finished, Lilah—feeling incredibly stupid, but not knowing what else to do—lifted the empty cup to her lips.

Mesektet turned her attention back to Fred. "You want something from me, Fred."

Fred nodded shyly. "The isotopic variables won't stabilize for any of the _eigen_states. Nothing produces a solution. There's no way to balance the equation. Unless you know how."

"Of course I know how," Mesektet stated matter-of-factly, then turned to Lilah. "Crumpet?"

Lilah demurred, and Mesektet seemed to accept this, as she turned back to Fred. "Will you tell me?"

Mesektet seemed to consider the question as she pantomimed eating a muffin. "I could tell you the answer," she said at last, "but then your brain would explode."

Fred hung her head. "I was afraid of that," she said, softly. "It can't be quantified."

Mesektet put down the plastic muffin, reached across the small table to put her hand on Fred's shoulder. "No," she agreed gently, "it can't. There's so much more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in your arithmetic. Love, hate, friendship, betrayal. Magic in all its infinite varieties. Perhaps one day you'll develop a mathematics able to hold it all, but that day is not today, Fred."

Fred's eyes were still staring at her lap. She had dropped her teacup, and it was as if she had once again retreated into the silent world of her insanity. "It doesn't compute," she muttered. "It won't compute. The equation won't balance, zero equals one, and you can prove anything from a contradiction."

"Exactly," Mesektet said firmly, her hand still on Fred's shoulder. "Which means anything is possible. Go out and live life to its fullest. Keep on working. Don't worry; we still have plenty of plans for you."

Then Mesektet took her hand off Fred's shoulder, and turned back to Lilah. "Do be sure to stop back again," she said, before the white light engulfed the lawyer once again.

* * *

They were in the elevator again, and for a moment Lilah entertained the notion that the entire thing had never happened. But no, the crushed look on Fred's face made it extremely clear that the entire experience had been all too real.

Lilah pushed the button for the lobby, and felt the elevator begin to descend. Fred said nothing, only stood in the corner of the elevator, silent.

Lilah felt she ought to say something, but wasn't sure exactly what it was that she should say. So, imitating Mesektet's earlier gesture, she simply placed her hand on Fred's shoulder, gave it a quick squeeze, and stood next to the girl as the elevator went down, down, down.


End file.
